Episode 6: “Mama Benita: Roots, Rights, and Revolution”

In Episode 6 of Of Seed and Soil: Unincorporated Voices of Food, Farming, and Freedom, we’re honored to spotlight one of the enduring pillars of food justice and cultural stewardship in the Virgin Islands: Mama Benita Martin of We Grow Food, Inc.

Born in Detroit and rooted in Chicago before finding home in the hills of Bordeaux, St. Thomas, Mama Benita has spent decades cultivating more than crops—she’s cultivated community, culture, and consciousness.
In this episode, Mama Benita shares her journey and reflections as:

-----A farmer, educator, and founding force within the Bordeaux farming movement
-----A mother, mentor, and disability rights advocate supporting inclusive access to land and opportunity
-----A powerful public speaker, grant writer, and culture bearer uplifting African identity in the U.S. Virgin Islands
-----A tireless activist connecting the dots between food, land, education, and liberation

Whether she’s representing We Grow Food at national conferences or lending a hand to sister farmers on St. Croix, Mama Benita leads with vision and love. This episode is a tribute to her legacy, her laughter, and the life she’s dedicated to growing justice from the ground up.

Learn more at: www.goodfoodvi.org

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Subscribe for more unfiltered, rooted, and revolutionary voices from the land.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:10

Welcome to of Seed and Soil. I am Summer Sidney Brown, your host, and this podcast is about uplifting and unincorporated voices of food, farming, and freedom. We are in the Virgin Islands, but we hope to capture stories from across the Caribbean because we want to tell the stories of farmers, fishers, culture bearers, and the people in the food system. And so one such person that I'm with me today is Miss Benita Martin. Hello, Miss Benita. Hello, Mr. Summer.

SPEAKER_02 0:42

How are you today?

SPEAKER_01 0:43

I am fine and I'm really, really, really, really happy that you're here.

SPEAKER_02 0:47

Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 0:48

Miss Benita, so the purpose of the podcast is to tell people who farmers are or who the consumer is or who the chef is. And I start with the question: who is Benita Martin?

SPEAKER_02 1:04

Okay. A few years ago I had to do a bio. And how I start that off, I want to start it off here. I'm an African that was born in Detroit, Michigan in 1952. And I grew up on the west side of Detroit and was raised by my big mama who migrated from Georgia. So I have a lot of Southern tradition within me. And she was a first generation free slave. So some of her techniques of raising was similar to that of someone that had been a slave. So we had to iron sheets and scrub floors on our hands and do many things the traditional way. So I can say I really learned how to do things from scratch and with no can. So as a young lady, um I really can say I had some foundation in cooking and cleaning and knowing how to be a proper woman in that area. I only came to escape the cold weather. And I'm on backtrack. I lived in Detroit. I graduated in high school in 1997 and couldn't wait to leave home. I went to Chicago to go to school, to become an orientation and mobility specialist for the visually impaired. Pursue my career in Chicago, got tired of the cold. I had four children, and it was very cold, and I decided to move to Miami and worked in the Miami school system with the visually impaired and the state of Florida, teaching visually impaired from Key West all the way up to Tallahassee. And then my mom became ill and I moved back to Detroit. It was freezing cold. I think I left out one experience, a couple of experiences. I worked overseas in Kuwait as a vision specialist. I also worked in Egypt as a vision specialist in Cairo and then moved back to Miami. And then my mom became sick and I decided to go home for a while. And then she was well, and something came up in my professional paper about teaching position in St. Thomas. And I said, okay, let me check it out. It's too cold here. And I came to St. Thomas with the interest of only staying one year. And I met my husband, my husband then, and he was a farmer in Bordeaux. And that's how I began farming in Bordeaux. His name is, they call him Jambi, Lucian Samuel. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:41

I didn't know that. And you know, like, I feel like because you are an elder in the Bordeaux community and really like a mama to everybody, you know, like you feel known and familiar and like you feel a lot of love. And so thank you for just giving me that timeline. I did not know. You said a vision orientation.

SPEAKER_02 5:01

I'm an orientation mobility specialist.

SPEAKER_01 5:04

Orientation mobility specialist. I have no idea what that is, so I'm gonna ask you to just share with me what is an orientation mobility specialist?

SPEAKER_02 5:14

So I teach a visually impaired, either partially sighted or totally blind youth, adults, how to travel, utilizing the cane. But then I also have a specialist, uh specialty in teaching Braille. I also work on daily living skills. I do vision training. When I was overseas, I did vision training, water therapy for persons that were visually impaired. And um so I've been working with autistic children, children with multiple disabilities. So, but um, as far as my love, that is one of my loves as a professional, but the other one was agriculture, and so it's just I've been blessed to do what I want to do all over the world, what I love to do. It's a gift. I really think everyone is given a gift of passion, and then you decide, and many times it's hard for people to decide what they want to do, and I was blessed to figure it out when I was very young.

SPEAKER_01 6:31

So, orientation mobility specialist with all of this experience and all of like knowledge you, I mean, you were in a lot of places, and then you come to St. Thomas, meet your husband, and you are in Bordeaux and you become a farmer.

SPEAKER_02 6:52

Um, I loved out a lot in between there. I really did. Um being born in the 50s, being part of the 60s, and making that decision that the system wasn't working for us. I was part of um my family really was uh part of the not Hebrew Israelites. I was part of the Hebrew Israelites, but uh Elijah Mohammed had an impact on us in Detroit. And I had cousins that belonged to the uh Muslim movement there in Detroit, and learning about food and how that commercial industry, food industry was going to happen. Uh, I went to Malcolm X College when it first opened up in Chicago, and so that experience brought, we had all kinds of study groups about food, about how we as a people needed to go forward, what we needed to empower ourselves. And always food came up. So my goal was to grow food for me and my children. So I I grew, I was in many study groups prior, and I knew I was going to be a farmer, and as my children said, but I never thought we'd be farming like this, because as you know, maybe not everyone else, but you know, St. Thomas is very hilly, and our terrain is very steep, and my children always thought we'll be on a flat land and roads and roads, and it's it's quite different.

SPEAKER_01 8:47

So you touched on something in terms of as you filled in the the blank in this many time. I was like, oh wow. We on another episode we we tied kind of like food to liberation, and that's what I was hearing you say in the experiences like in all of these rooms, right? With the honorable Elijah Mohammed, with Brother Malcolm X the school, like all of these things that you experienced in the 50s and 60s led you to understand that the path forward for our people, yeah, right, had to involve like our liberation, had to involve food.

SPEAKER_02 9:26

Yes, for sure.

SPEAKER_01 9:29

And so even before you got to St. Thomas, you knew you were going to be farming. Oh, yes, and you and your kids knew it. And they knew it. And yeah, and then you come to an island and farming looks completely different because maybe in Detroit or in large states, you have access to hundreds of flat rolling acres where you could like just, you know, plant 200 things in a straight line. Yes. Um, using a tractor, and it goes in, and where you choose to farm or where you settled, or where far where the land chose you.

SPEAKER_02 10:05

Not where the land chose me, where the father placed me, because I always had said I couldn't live on the island because where am I gonna drive to? I mean, I I like driving, so I used to drive all over the place, but I accept and what where I'm being blessed at and what point I'm being blessed at, that this is this is where I'm supposed to be. This is the time to do and give the gifts that was given to me and to the people who need it. So I I uh I love that.

SPEAKER_01 10:42

I accept where I'm being blessed. Yeah, so Bordeaux, um, because I want to, Bordeaux is in the west end, west end of St. Thomas, and um we also kind of talked about this, touched on it lightly. It is, we talked about terracing.

SPEAKER_02 11:00

Yes, and St.

SPEAKER_01 11:00

Croix don't necessarily have two terraces. So St. Croix is so in the Virgin Islands, if you're just joining us, we are comprised of four islands, right? St. Thomas, St. John, St. Croix, Water Island. Um, we're broken into districts, it's like the St. Croix district and then the St. Thomas, St. John district, of which Water Island is a part. Right. So we're focusing on St. Thomas in this conversation, okay, which is 34 square miles. Yes, right, and hilly. Um, and so to farm, you gotta farm in a hill.

SPEAKER_02 11:31

Right. And you navigate in a lot of rocks, a lot of rocks and a lot of falling.

SPEAKER_01 11:38

A lot of falling?

SPEAKER_02 11:39

I've fallen many times, definitely in the beginning, because I didn't understand. Side step down, don't try and go straight down the steep slopes.

SPEAKER_01 11:50

Side step down. You you I afraid of them hills. So you know, like when we when I used to go up to visit, like I used to close my eyes when Royce would drive in, be like, no, eyes closed because it is it it's mountainous, it's uh it's more than hilly, yeah, right? It is mountainous terrain. Yes. Um, so okay, you begin farming and uh you're in Bordeaux and you become part of a movement, right? Tell us a little bit about like outside of just being like, okay, I'm gonna farm individually and I'm gonna feed my children. You build a whole life in a community up there. What is that? What starts that?

SPEAKER_02 12:30

Okay, so again, it's a blessing. That's where it started. When I came in '94, and then that's when there began We Grow Food Inc. And there was a battle going on between the Livestock Association and the produce farmers. And so out of frustration, we grow food inc was begun with, I think maybe 20 or 30 farmers who had been given land by the governor, told to go west, move from different other locations. And then the Livestock Association decided that the same land that farmers have been farming on, they wanted it. So it began a battle.

SPEAKER_01 13:21

I want to go back on to pause there. So these farmers were farming in different parts of St. Thomas, and then the government was like, we want to shift your plots to the West End. Yes. Okay. Didn't know this. I am learning. All right. It's good.

SPEAKER_02 13:35

This is King, Governor King, who said, we're going to set this area in Bordeaux for the crop farmers we have relocated. Now the land itself, the Maduro family had donated the land in the West for agriculture. And what happened is it seemed like they were behind that land exchange to the Department of Agriculture. Somehow, the Department of Housing and Finance got a piece of that land. And that's when some of the development went on. But and I can't remember the years, but the earlier years, I'm sure like in the earlier 1950s, that land was donated and being specifically for agriculture. Yeah. So during that battle, um, and which began in 94, and then we had a little interruption of that sweet lady Marilyn, who came in and destroyed most of St. Thomas, and we stayed on our plot, and we worked our plot and rebuilt, and we started the battle again. And thankful that we as crop farmers merged with the acreage we needed, and livestock merged with what they needed. And so we grow food was founded with uh, I can't remember all the heads, but that's how we grow food ink began. And I just want to say the brothers have really stuck through it and persevere, and uh it hasn't been easy.

SPEAKER_01 15:34

So Marilyn Hurricane Marilyn, right? Because that sweet lady you're referring to is Hurricane Marilyn, and we live in a hurricane zone, but I feel like back then they didn't happen so frequently. Like I feel like, you know, growing up, there was like Hurricane Hugo, then there was a break, there was Hurricane Marilyn, then there was a break. Like this yearly experience of these severe storms wasn't the same. When you moved here, would you say in your experience that's also accurate?

SPEAKER_02 16:07

Yes, I I my first experience was Maryland. I had never been through devastation like that. So that was 95. And then actually there was a bertha before Maryland and a Louis, I think before then. But they were like Yeah, there was never anything like that. But they were severe enough when you the one thing about agriculture and crop farming is you're out there in the element. Everyone says it's a business, and you gotta treat it just like a business. But you can't treat it just like a business because there's no business that can go through such damage like a hurricane, pests, drought. There's so much that can happen in your business that can change it overnight. Um, there was the pink millybug that came through. And we were, as organic farmers, it was really difficult to deal with. And then there was the citrus disease that came through, I think about seven or eight years. But there's always something that's constant, and and it's the love, it's the love.

SPEAKER_01 17:28

So I think that's what you're talking about, is really important to kind of uplift because there I on an episode I'm talking with a consumer, right? And this consumer, their perspective is like it is a business and there should be regulation, and you know, that's the risk that the farmer's taking on. But I don't think a lot of people, and I don't as a non-farmer but farmer advocate, I don't think I did justice to uplifting, right? All of the challenges it takes to get something from seed to plate, um, and just like the intensity um for a farmer. And so, anyway, if you could describe any of that, I mean you are describing it, you're talking about the melee bug and the different outdoor factors, but what else? What else is what else is our farmers up against when they wake up in the morning and they decide, I want a crop?

unknown 18:29

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 18:30

Um, and here it would be different, and St. Croix will be a little different. Talking about St. Thomas. So in St. Thomas, you have to make sure you have your terraces built prior to most of it, not everyone. There's some people that have flat, they can build mounds, but for sure for the majority of us, we have to build terraces. And it's very important for soil, for water retention. Um, so terracing, water, um, and I should back up access to your farm. That is like one of the biggest issues, is roads and being able to get to your farm. That can become very tiresome, very spooky, unsafe, um, because the roads were not, the infrastructure was not correctly built from the beginning. You know, the idea go ahead, go out there and farm, but the whole concept and thinking out. So if we have tin farmers in this direction going down, we have tin farmers going up, and the roads are all dirt roads, and we, of course, from, and there used to be an un now that it's been a change in climate, we have more rain, so all this water impacting, not having the proper guttering, so that the water can channel in the right direction, there's issues.

SPEAKER_01 20:13

So, like that's so I think on St. Croix farmers may I know of a farmer on St. Croix who have a limit uh a road access problem based on the way the water runs and like the erosion, and they just can't even get to their land. But in Bordeaux, I feel like to uplift the fact that so we could even go further back, access to land, right? So, access to the land itself. So you do you do your paperwork, you get your license, you get access to land. Yes, then there's access to roads, and I just like full disclaimer the only farm I've been on in the Bordeaux area is Green Ridge Guava Berry Farm because I'm scared of the roads. I don't like no, like I don't like heights, I don't, and so I already know that the dirt road, the skidding, the washout, the need of four-wheel drive, yeah, that's too much anxiety for me. So, like, come meet me up at the market, right? So, if you have never been to Bordeaux, we're on top of a mountainside, there's a beautiful view. Yeah, the farming is happening in the hillside of the mountain, and what I'm saying is come meet me at the top point where there is shelter and pavement, yes, because and show me pictures of your farm. Not because I don't want to go and see it, but truthfully, that I got some fear there about driving those roads. Tell anyone where it's taking me up, but it'd be like close eyes, close eyes, close eyes, you can make it.

SPEAKER_02 21:40

But you told me you went in Puerto Rico up high, hi, hi.

SPEAKER_01 21:44

Yeah, but the but the roads in Puerto Rico were paved.

SPEAKER_02 21:46

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_01 21:47

Right, it was still mountainous, but none of it was like off road, right? The road conditions were very, very, very different. So I hear you. So you're saying one farmers are. Fighting just to get to their farms based on access. Um, I don't even remember. Remember one time I was talking to you, you had me on speaker, and then it was raining, and you were like, I gotta go because I'm on these roads, and I was just like, Is Miss Benny Doki? It wasn't happening, and I started calling you because that's how scary these roads is.

SPEAKER_02 22:17

Yeah, it does. It become very scary. And I'm blessed where I live, it's right off of a concrete road. But there's other farmers that are not, and even uh we had this heavy rain about three or four weeks ago, and a farmer needed help to get his crops up, and it was an issue trying to go down to pick up his crops so he could get up because he didn't have a four-wheel. And they say I would travel anywhere, and I will once I know my I have a good vehicle, I will travel. Um, so it was, it was, it can be. So roads, access to water is better than what it has been, but it's still not like it should be. You know, uh we now have some tanks uh that water is pumped to from the well. Uh we have ponds, but the the part is the distribution system breaks down. It's you you can say you have a water system, but you need it needs to be constant and consistent. So last, what's it, earlier part of this year, they had did something to the roads. My pipe was broken. I didn't realize it was broken. So when you say they like our general public works division? Our Department of Agriculture has did something to the road. And I wasn't using that particular pipe because that was my backup for whale water. I mostly used palm water, and something happened to our pump. And so then I went and had to fix the pipe. But then after I fixed the pipe, something went wrong with the whale water. So I would uh with the whale pump, and they couldn't get anyone for over a week. So there I am, though I have maybe 8,000 gallons of holding water to hold water tanks in my yard. But two weeks that 8,000 was gone, and I ordered water, and the funny thing, the water truck broke down. These are just showing things can happen even when you have plant A, B, and C in agriculture. So when people say, oh, why aren't you producing so much? And why? It's light. It's one of those things in life. And all farmers, I believe, want to produce at a high quality, high quantity rate.

SPEAKER_01 25:12

So Ms. Bennings, I don't know anybody who wakes up in the morning and does anything and says, I want to be subpar mediocre, right? Like I just don't know a person who says, that's my goal, I'm gonna give subpar quality. Um, and I think a lot of times when we feel like people aren't performing to what a level of like I guess what community or what has been the normalized expectation, we assume that that person is subpar instead of it, instead of exploring what are the conditions this person is trying to achieve the thing in, right? And of course, sometimes people are just tired. Yes, sometimes people are just tired. Like if you were to say, how long have most of the farmers, your peers, right, your contemporaries, how long have y'all been farming together?

SPEAKER_02 26:06

I was just speaking to Brother Oswat, and we celebrating his 51st year in farming, and most of the farmers in our community are over 30 years in agriculture.

SPEAKER_01 26:21

Over 30 years in agriculture. And what age would you estimate that they started?

SPEAKER_02 26:30

I'm not sure. I I would say in their late 20s, early 30s.

SPEAKER_01 26:35

So we're talking about 58 to 65 year olds.

SPEAKER_02 26:39

Yes, for sure.

SPEAKER_01 26:40

Who've been doing this for 30 years?

SPEAKER_02 26:42

The majority. We are getting some young farmers, brother Seila, I would say, is about one of the youngest. We have uh older farmer in his 60s, and his son said, This is what I want to do. I don't want to do anything else. I want to farm. And so he's farming. But many of us that had children and grew up, I had five children, and they grew up on the farm, but um there two of them still live here, but really they look at the business aspect of it and also the aspect of the consistency of having a financial stability. And they chose not to stay in agriculture. But now I can't say that. Now my eldest is talking about coming back and doing agri-tourism, telling me how you need to do that and need to do that. I had at one point in time I had a 20 by 80 greenhouse where I grew cucumbers and tomatoes. And those other two ladies came to visit and they snatched all that up. So we're talking about Irma and Maria? Yes. Hurricanes Irma and Maria came through. Yes. So um haven't been able to replace that, but now they're talking about this is what people want. They want nature, they want this, and we can do this and we can start growing that. And I said to them, even this, like maybe about four or five weeks ago, well, we need to have a family meeting. You show me your vision, and I can begin to work it because I don't know how much longer I'll be able to keep it up. And you tell me when you're coming home to begin that process.

SPEAKER_01 28:50

So let me ask you two questions. Um, well, I have more than two, obviously. Your land tenure. Are you do you own your land? Do you lease your land?

SPEAKER_02 29:00

Who are you leasing it from? So I we had a 30-year lease with the Department of Agriculture. It expired three years ago. Um, they're not renewing it because it has to go through the legal process of legislation, and I actually think it should be rewritten, but uh it has to go through the legal process. So right now uh I have I have the lease that expired, and um I'm hoping that they will allow us land trust or homesteading, more stability in ownership of some kind of the land.

SPEAKER_01 29:47

So I think the land trust concept is super interesting because if the land was gifted to the government by a family for agricultural purposes, right, and is now being stewarded by the government, how do we ensure, right, that we don't lose any of that like the land, the land's intentional purpose remains if we don't point in our land trust. We just we just gotta trust the government.

SPEAKER_02 30:22

No, I I I'm not sure. What you I think you better at knowing what all this means.

SPEAKER_01 30:29

Yeah, but it's a rhetorical question, I guess, right? Because that's that's part of the issue, right? As we live in a place that what people don't realize, Miss Benita, I think is like with every disaster, with every one of those ladies that visit us, there's a recovery process. Yes, and in that recovery process, I feel like we lose just a little bit more land that had an agricultural purpose, right? Like just because there's a need for emergency housing, which is valid. There's a need for elect supplemental electricity, so we need solar farms, it's valid. There's a need for emergency health care facility, all of the things that they're taking the land for are valid, but nobody in thinking about the emergency need for food.

SPEAKER_02 31:16

Right. And that that's the issue. I mean, we threw Irma and Marie, uh, Irma, which one came first?

SPEAKER_01 31:24

Irma came first.

SPEAKER_02 31:25

Oh, so doing so. Irma, St. Thomas was hit really hard. And if it wasn't for the farmers over here, in particular, Sajia Farm, they send boxes and boxes of food for our farmers in our community, and we were able to assist. I'm not saying provide 100% of the meals through that whole process, but it was able to have fresh produce, local produce that was sent over. And then Maria came next, and we weren't able to assist. But the thing is, um, that just shows that, and and Puerto Rico even sent over clothes and water and food to St. Thomas. And it was really great to see it. That's why the connection, we have to be strong together. We cannot say, oh, St. Thomas, we're gonna just do this, or St. Croix, we're gonna just do that, or Puerto Rico, they can just do that. We have to work collectively to make it strong. Because all of us is out here in the middle of the ocean. And we all need each other. Without that unity and setting up systems of food systems, that's where the importance is. And for me, I look to you for those kind of things, setting them system. I'm a I'm a foot soldier, I really am. And I you tell me to get something done, I'm gonna ensure that I get it done. Absolutely. If you set a plan or action, or we sit down and we look at those variables that need to happen to make it happen, I'm gonna collect the rest of that army. And our army's gonna move forward to make it happen.

SPEAKER_01 33:28

So um you have you have music played in my head. We are soldiers in jazz. Played in my head. Um, you know, Miss Benita, it's so funny because to me, you're like my general, right? I I look to my elders, you, um, Sparks, Eldridge, right? Um, Yvette, Dale, Raskubu, like all the people who've been doing this for 50 plus years. Taima and St. Croix, right? Like Farmers in Action. Yes. There's like five food organizations, and like VI Good Food is like the baby organization coming, like really building on top of a lot of the legacy work that you all have done to even begin for me to understand like that food systems is a thing, right? Y'all have done so much work in holding space. So I'm just like, you know, when where Miss Benita needs me? What what what events that what you know, like, and I think a lot of the story of the the things that you guys have championed, is it visible to the whole community just how much grit you all have had to have just to do some of the things that we take for granted. Like that, like there's a market in Bordeaux. Nobody really stops to question how it got there, but how did it get there?

SPEAKER_02 34:56

So we have the Bordeaux Farmers Market, and that was a vision. We began at a bus stop on a Sunday because farmers had produced left from Saturday Market. Traditionally, farmers packed up at four o'clock in the morning and went down to the uh farmers market in town. Sandarilla Thomas Bumbleo. That's what you find it? Okay, go ahead. Yes, so that was Saturday morning. And then if you didn't sell, what you didn't sell, you drive around trying to sell, but still you might be left with something. So we decided to set up at the bus stop, and then people start coming. So during Maryland, the tennis court got destroyed, and that's where the Bordeaux farmers market was formed. So we went down to the Department of Parks and Recreation, and we requested the use of the tennis court. We actually requested for it to be turned over to We Grow Food, and they denied us. They said it was owned by the Department of Interior, and they could not turn it over to a non-for-profit or a non-government agency. So from there we got it turned over to the Department of Agriculture, and then the Department of Agriculture gave us permission to use it. So for many years we used it. So we used pallets in the beginning and palm leaves, and every year we'll build up the stalls and everything. And then we try to get a grant through Virgin I, a block grant. And we would deny twice. Well, we were denied once, and they said, because no one will come to Bordeaux, it's too far away, it's behind God's eye. Bordeaux is far, we don't call it Bordo Rico. Oh, yes, it is, it's the far end, the West End. And so when we were denied, that was the reason, the logic. And then Commissioner Schuster applied, and he was denied because they said its application wasn't proper or something. And then Dr. Peterson, Akhil applied with the help of an outside grant writer, and he received it to modernize the market. And what was that, 98, I think. And so that's when it was built. Um the first stage was built was a cistern, and then the second stage was the actual covering of the market area, and then the third stage was a pushback wall, and then there were other stages. The fourth stage never happened, and that was to be a bathroom, a stage, um, an all-purpose center, and then kiads. So we have up by the assistance of the grant from the block grant was the cistern, the main covering for the main market area, which is the length of a tennis court, and the wall retaining wall. After that, we grow food came in. We build the bathroom, we build the stage, and then we build the Wooden Youth Activity Center. And then again in 2017, all that was knocked down. And we grow food sought funding. The original bathroom was two stalls for the women, one for the men, and now we have a restroom that has five stalls and two for the men. We built back a stage even larger. We put in a concrete use center. We have put in a concrete storage room for our equipment. We have a walk-in cooler and a walk-in freezer, and the most important item that I personally feel occurred is that we're off the grid. Totally, the walk-in cooler, freezer, everything's off the grid. We operate on solar energy, and um that to me is an accomplishment.

SPEAKER_01 40:15

All of it is our accomplishment, and I hope what listeners hear is how necessity drove action, right? There was a necessity to make sure that farmers could offload extra produce that was coming back with them from the market and to offer ease, so y'all problem solve together. And then you went to seek partnership, and so it was a community partnership or public nonprofit, civic-private partnership, because then you went to the Department of Housing, Parks and Recreation, and then at scale you just kept going and you didn't stop because when they said no to you, then you found a different partner. Say, well, we're gonna try here, we're gonna try here, and then even for a government agency to be like, Okay, bam, I see your vision. Yes, we can do this. When they applied, they got denied two times, right? So just because it's the Department of Agriculture don't mean it's a yes, right? They had to do work finally. So it went from one commissioner to a next commissioner, and the work was done. But the vision really started to answer the need that promoted, and y'all had to stick on it. Y'all didn't just get to say, okay, we pass it off, right? Like this is years and months of relationship and navigating and being like, and then now it exists, and then when the government finally, the the black grant took it to to one scale, then we grow food came in, and through other channels, physical labor, fundraising, personal investments, all the like. Yeah, y'all built our own up around that infrastructure, and you caretake all of that infrastructure. Because you y'all clean it, you all paint it, y'all maintain it. That's there's there's no you know, major maintenance that happens through the collective of We Grow Food. So I just want to applaud like all of We Grow Food in demonstrating what collective action could look like in the virgin. That could does look like yes, it does.

SPEAKER_02 42:31

What it does look like now it needs to grow. It really is not okay. We're at one point, and and it's a trust factor. You know, having a vision and trust in that next person standing next to you is going to do your their part to make that that movement move, trust in that they see that vision. And sometimes that doesn't happen so simple, but when when others see they're really doing it, they're really, and and I think that's why our partners, that's why we've been able to get the funding to different foundations, community foundation, rotary saw what we were doing, and they said, wow, these farmers, they they keep working, they keep going at it, they haven't given up. And that's it. You just never get in any means necessary. This is like back to the teachings of Brother Mantham. Yes, keep moving, you never give up, and it will happen. And then that collectiveness, it is just so important us not look at I, I, I, and my farm is producing all of this. Well, if one farm is producing and one farm is only providing, it's not making the community strong. And we're, for me as a farmer, it's about community and strengthening our community, strengthening our elders, our youth, and giving them that vision and making sure that they see that little seed grow and then how it grows and from that plant. You put it on the plate and you can eat and you can make money from it. But our, you know, it's tough work. It is very hard. I don't want to like make it glamorous, but it's work that can bring you a profit and it can bring you the greatest satisfaction in the world.

SPEAKER_01 44:47

So, Miss Benita, as we round out and close off this conversation, if you could tell your fellow farmers, right? Like if they take, they stumble onto this and they take one thing from our conversation, what would you tell your fellow farmers in the community?

SPEAKER_02 45:06

Let's work more together. Let's work more collectively on solving each other's problems. Make your brother's problems your problems. Don't just look at what you got growing, techniques that you're using, because definitely we have to use different techniques. I don't get, I used to get up early in the morning and I can begin farming and stay out there till 11, 12 o'clock. I can't do that because of the sun. You know, different techniques that you use that's making it happen. And at one point I do want to say, people always say climate change. It's a change in climate because we as human beings, what we have done to our environment. And so be great environmental stewards, remember to compost, but let's work more collectively, sharing, and um that's that's about it.

SPEAKER_01 46:18

Well, if you stuck around and you joined us in this really enriching conversation that talks a little bit about what the life of a farmer and farming is in St. Thomas, we want to thank you. We want you to like, we want you to subscribe, we want you to share, we want you to add comments if you want to. Um, but today the charge really is a farmer to farmer charge, or in this case, an advocate to farmer charge, is as we are growing our systems and our food system, you heard from Miss Benny Dand, what we're asking is right, that for us to find the unity and to build our collective body. So the charge is for you to think about what is it that I do that I can share with my neighbor today. Um, my neighbor who might be just my neighbor, my neighbor who might be a consumer, but my neighbor who's a farmer. Thank you guys for joining us in this video.